We know there are a lot of people out there just itching to get their hands on the new beta versions of Apple’s upcoming OSs. For the first time, Apple is releasing public betas of their desktop OS (El Capitan, aka OS 10.11), and IOS 9 for the iPad and iPhone. This post is here to tell you what’s what about these releases, and help you decide whether to give the new systems a shot.

Now it’s very important to remember that, public beta or not, this is BETA software – which means it’s not done, and it’s NOT going to work perfectly. If it were, it wouldn’t be called “beta”. That said, a good, solid beta can be worth checking out, and we know many are dying to try out the latest and greatest, so here’s our assessment of the current crop of Apple beta softwares.

El Capitan Beta3

El Capitan is mostly useable. Not every app you use will work, and others will not work without you jumping through some hoops. This, of all the betas, is the one it’s easiest to try out, as you can install it on a separate partition or drive from your primary, and give it a shot. The best approach to take is to clone your current system to an external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner, boot to that drive by holding down the “option” key during boot up, and install the beta to that drive. This will allow you to try your installed apps under the new system, and see how it all works. Generally, it’s a good, useable beta.

Many are saying that Beta2 was better than the current Beta3, but we’re seeing little difference.

We give it a 7 out of 10.

IOS 9 Beta3

IOS 9 has been mostly-useable since beta 1. That said, while there are some cool new features, including the new News app, which was just released in beta 3 for the first time, we would recommend you avoid the betas for now on any device you really need to use on a daily basis. You WILL experience freezes and reboots running the current betas under even the most recent hardware, and many have complained of major battery issues, though we haven’t seen that in our devices.

We rate this a 6 out of 10.

WatchOS 2 Beta1

This is the only one of the betas which is not available as a public beta at this time, and that’s a good thing, as it is far from ready for general use. Again, a lot of good stuff has been added over the last release, but you do not want to try running this on a device you’re using day-to-day at this point.

We give WatchOS a 4 out of 10.

We will update these assessments with new information as new betas are released.